I have locked in the dates mentioned in the Lectorial about the studios and they honestly sound very exciting. I originally went into this course to focus solely on filmmaking and editing but the course is Media not film, and at first I was rolling my eyes at the lectures on Media affordances, and social media.

That part of my mind is reserved for people who are really good at curating their Instagrams, and if you’ve seen my gram, you will understand why I’ve ruled myself out of social media. It’s a hot mess.

Yet the further we explored through media as an online institution, the places and spaces and the materialism and flexibility media can have, or not have, was fascinating. I think in the studios I might try to stray from film and TV and hopefully make something that will set me up as an online media practitioner.
I hope I get to do something like Miranda July’s app Somebody. An app where strangers were asked to deliver messages between friends rather than messaging online. It brought a physical side to messaging again. 

It’s interesting to think how each medium has different characteristics that make it distinct; physically, socially, psychologically. Books are intimate, and one of the few experiences we can have alone. It’s so much less likely that someone has read the same book as you compared to watching the same tv show or movie. I think it’s really special talking about a book with someone who has also read it, because it’s so rare. You immerse yourself in a text, which you use your own imagery to illustrate and then it ends. It’s a pretty unique experience.
Not to sound too pretentious.

It touches on media languages; the expectations of a medium we have, and the way we read it. To use TV as an example’ we understand it’s l;languages through time; how long the ads run for, spaces between ad breaks, cliff hangers, closure, lounge rooms, laptops, alone or with family. etc. These aren’t only languages but media environments. Ways to describe and create experiences.

Interesting questions raised in the lecture discussed historical texts for prediction of the future. These were;
how does technology rewrite the history
how does it change ourselves?

I believe the history of a medium form does not go from one technology to the other for no reason other than an advance.  Its the social and cultural history that motivates innovation. After the invention of the telephone social patterns were disrupted. Each time we lose a social capacity to an invention, we gain one with eh next technological advance in it’s area.

We briefly touched on the crossing of class values, exclusivity, accessibility of technology. An example was the digital divide in the 90s which defined who has access to information, who is left behind. By leaving behind poorer people with low technical infrastructure we create another social education class. This furthers into the political gearing behind technology and the ways it defines our world. but thats a topic for another day.